1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and a system for managing image data, and more particularly, to a method and a system for managing image data uploaded via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a digital camera is equipped in a portable communication terminal (hereinafter, referred to as a client terminal), such as a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), a cellular phone, etc., and provides original image data of an object captured thereby to the client terminal. Then, the client terminal compresses the original image data to form a compressed image file having a data compression format, and stores it. Also, the client terminal can transfer the compressed original image data file to a receiver via a network. The receiver is another client terminal or communication terminal being able to download compressed image files via the network, such as a personal computer, a PDA, etc. But, since the storage capacity of a client terminal is typically very low, an additional system is required for managing the compressed image files (i.e., the compressed original image data).
To meet this requirement, the conventional image data management systems generally transfer a compressed image file, uploaded from a client terminal, to a database. And, the conventional systems transfer the compressed image file stored in the database to a receiver, responsive to an image transfer command externally inputted. Also, the conventional systems decode the compressed image file, and then display the original image of the object.
However, when the file size of a compression image file is large, there is a disadvantage in the conventional systems that a retrieval time is increased for reading out the compression image file, so that a time interval is increased in display of the original image. Therefore, a need exists for an image data management system and method in which search and retrieval of image files in a database are performed more efficiently to reduce the time period for processing the image data.